Glaciers on the Rocks

Some of the most striking geographic features of Washington and northern Oregon are its five towering volcanoes. As you travel south from Seattle along I-5 towards Portland, Mount Rainier and a somewhat stunted but still imposing Mount Saint Helens dominate your view. The southernmost of the “Five Sisters” is Mount Hood. One especially distinctive characteristic of these peaks is their perpetual glacial white “caps” floating above the landscape, seemingly untouched by the march of time.

The naturalist John Muir was especially enamored of the mountain glaciers of the Northwest. Here is an account of one of his meetings with these majestic edifices:

The entire front above the glacier appeared as one tremendous precipice, slightly receding at the top, and bristling with spires and pinnacles set above one another in formidable array. Massive lichen-stained battlements stood forward here and there, hacked at the top with angular notches, and separated by frosty gullies and recesses that have been veiled in shadow every since their creation; while to right and left, as far as I could see, were huge crumbling buttresses, offering no hope to the climber” (Muir 1985 reprint, 43).

Even more beautiful are the watery kin of these imposing mounds of ice: glacial lakes. In their clear waters are reflected the majesty of glacial creation: steep slabs of granite, jagged crags, and crevasses scraping the sky. Glaciers are like the fingers of God, molding everything in their path to their own will, in their own sweet time.

Sadly, glaciers worldwide are fast disappearing from the scene. Virtually every large mountain glacier in the world is in retreat. Again, the main culprit is global warming. Many pseudo scientists assert that all this “hooey” about rising temperatures is really just the result of temporary regional variations. Scientists have detected many regional weather cycles. El Niño, which occurs every few years, is one example. However, if warming trends are only the result of regional weather patterns, how can you explain the worldwide disappearance of glaciers? Obviously, something else is going on.